Conspiracy Theory
From Wolfekipedia
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and
diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the
public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible,
indeed, to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be
executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice.
—Adam Smith
I put the word “conspiracy” in quotes because it has become the favorite swearword of the Respectable Right and the “extremist”-baiting Left. If it is conspiracy-mongering to believe that human beings engage in purposeful activity to achieve their economic, political, and personal goals, then rational men and women must necessarily plead guilty. The alternative is to assert that human action is purposeless, random, and inexplicable. History, in this view, is a series of discontinuous accidents.
—Introduction
Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy (2005, PDF)
